A Fool's Lullaby: That Beautiful Goodbye
by Plushii
Summary: Remus has lost the man he loves twice. "I heard your voice saying, Not Harry, Remus. Not Harry, but I am aware that this is impossible. I am aware I couldn't hear the whispers at all." One-shot. Death fic. Angst. Set to the song "Beautiful Goodbye" by Amanda Marshall.


**Story: **A Fool's Lullaby: That Beautiful Goodbye

**Author: **Plushii

**Rating:** Erm... PG-13 or a very light R, maybe?

**Summary:** Remus has lost the man he loves twice. _I heard your voice saying, _Not Harry, Remus. Not Harry,_ but I am aware that this is impossible. I am aware I couldn't hear the whispers at all._ One-shot. Death fic. Angst. Set to the song "Beautiful Goodbye" by Amanda Marshall.

**Author's Notes:** Neither the song nor the characters belong to me. I claim responsibility for nothing. Also, this is unbeta'd because my beautiful cobaltviolet has gone missing and I can't seem to find her, and it's terrible because I adore her so and struggle with the thought of replacing her. I guess what I'm really trying to say is please be gentle!

**A Fool's Lullaby**

(That Beautiful Goodbye)

_By: _**Plushii**

_I'm fed up with my destiny,_

_In this place of no return._

_I think I'll take another day,_

_And slowly watch it burn._

_And it doesn't really matter how the time goes by,_

'_Cause I still remember you and I..._

_And that beautiful goodbye._

Looking back, I think that you knew what was going to happen before any of us knew it. I have no other reason to explain away why, after months of solidarity and watching the fragile bonds of our once too-quick, too-hot, too-perfect relationship crumble, you came to me in the night and stole away my breath as if your very life depended on it.

I don't remember when the chaotic tendrils of doubt had begun to cloud our better judgment; I couldn't even remember when I realized that you'd stopped crawling into bed with me night after night and took up sleeping on the couch. Sometimes you even slept somewhere that I couldn't identify, except that it smelled faintly of forest, and smoke, and musky like a dog.

But the night before the night I try desperately to forget, you'd come to me with trembling hands, and you'd begged my forgiveness. You'd kissed me tasting of firewhiskey, and hurt, and something so primal and carnal and almost forgotten after months of agonizing trepidation that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forget it.

And even though I didn't trust you, even though I knew that you were telling me that you were sorry because you were the traitor, because you'd betrayed us all, because you'd led us on a merry chase like fools for years only to succumb to the darkness we fought so hard to protect you against, I couldn't resist you.

Your tears were salty and wet on my cheeks, on my lips, in my hair, and despite the fact that you tasted slightly alcoholic and of stale breath, every sip from your mouth was divine; I was as lost to your kisses then as I had been the first time you'd kissed me in our fourth year, and every single time you'd kissed me after that. I was just as clumsy too, bumping teeth and noses, and catching my fingers at awkward angles as if I'd forgotten the contours of your body despite having spent so many years learning every beautiful line.

My guilt, my pain, and my doubt had never been strong enough to shadow my love for you, and it was why I'd been so glad when _Dumbledore_ had told James that you were the traitor, and why I was _so glad_ when James had known me well enough to read the look on my face, and smile sadly, and tell me, "I know, Remus, I know, I know." It was then that I _knew_ James loved you almost as much as I did, and that I knew he could see the changes in you, too.

It was why I couldn't stop the inevitability of the truth, and why I'd succumbed to you then, offering comfort, offering reassurances, and losing pieces of myself more and more after every thrust and hitching breath that followed our lovemaking well into the waking hours of dawn.

Exhausted as we were after, neither of us could find the strength to speak (or was it just that neither of us had the words?), and I fell into a fitful slumber that left me waking hours later to a bed so empty except for the salt of tears, and sweat, and the lingering scent our bodies left behind after such a frantic joining.

_We staggered through these empty streets,_

_Laughing arm in arm._

_The night had made a mess of me,_

_Your confessions kept me warm._

_And I don't really miss you, I just need to know..._

_Do you ever think of you and I..._

_And that beautiful goodbye?_

You'd murdered Peter in a place that once held memories I kept locked away like secrets inside of me, and you'd turned it into a graveyard of horror, burying school-boy trysts and pranks beneath the heady atmosphere of death.

I thought surely you'd be coming for me next, and I _welcomed_ death with such eagerness that I vaguely remember thinking myself a coward for not taking matters into my own hands and simply doing it myself.

But I told myself I'd wanted to see you one last time; I'd convinced myself that I couldn't give myself the blessed obliviousness of eternal rest until I knew _why, why, why_. Why had you betrayed James and Lily, why had you murdered Peter, _why had you left me to live without all of you in my life_?

Then I'd started to convince myself that I needed to live because _Harry needed to know_. He needed to know the _truth_, and he needed it from somebody who'd watched his father grow from a boy into a man; who'd watched his mother's hatred turn into a love without end; who'd watched young Peter Pettigrew stutter with anxiety about the answers to questions on a test, and then heroically faced off against his _very best friend_ in a feat of strength and loyalty that I had been unable to show myself. And then little Harry needed to know _why_ he'd never know his godfather as _intimately_ as all the rest, and why I, Remus, hadn't been able to stop Sirius Black from killing us all.

Harry would want to know _why, why, why_, and I owed at least this much to James for my silence, for my cowardice, and for my damnable inability to hate you enough for either of us to save _him_.

I hadn't thought about it then, but years after I'd found a small part of myself that was still living and breathing for you, I began to wonder if Azkaban had turned you into a shadow of the man you once were. I wondered vaguely at the color of your hair, and the smell of your skin, and the state of your complexion. I wondered if you were thinking of me, or if the maniac laughter you'd carried to Azkaban still rang crisp and clear through their walls even now.

I wondered if the dementors had broken your soul to irreparable repair, or if the anger and hatred and sickness of being born a Black still writhed and coiled within your belly like a living, breathing thing. I wondered if you lay in a puddle of your own waste, or if you raved the lunacies of a man gone mad in solitude, preaching a gospel of revenge and murder and death and hate.

I didn't care if you were okay-I didn't _want_ you to be okay—but still I wondered if you _were_ okay, and if it was me that kept you that from losing that last piece of threadbare sanity you might have.

I hated myself because I couldn't bring myself to tell anybody what you _were_, because you had done it for _me_, and because it was from a time when there was James, and Peter, and Sirius, and Remus; it was from a time when there had been Moony, and Wormtail, and Padfoot, and Prongs, infirmary recoveries full of chocolate, and four ill-matched boys so perfect for each other labeling themselves_ the Marauders_. There were childhood pranks, night of buzzing excitement, whispered promises, and a brotherhood that I knew now I was foolish for believing then would last _forever_.

"_I know, Remus, I know, I know. Dumbledore's already told me. Dumbledore told me it's Sirius."_

_When I see you now,_

_I wonder how I could have watched you walk away._

_If I let you down, please forgive me now..._

_For that beautiful goodbye._

You look haggard and worn in the picture the ministry posts all over every boarded window and door. Every lamp post, and street sign, and alleyway has a picture of you blinking up at me from a body so emaciated that it's almost grotesque, and I have a hard time comparing this shell of a human being, this caricature of your former glory, to the living, breathing, beautiful man so full of life that I remember.

I can see from the bitterness and hatred glaring through photographed eyes that being a Black is still raging war in the pit of your stomach. It's breathing life into you, giving you a _purpose_, and again I feel the thrill that maybe this time, _maybe this time_ the whispers are wrong and it's not Harry Potter that you're after, but _Remus Lupin_, because _Remus Lupin is at Hogwarts_, _he's at Hogwarts, he's at Hogwarts, too._

I don't think this possibility dawns on anybody but me in my selfish want of seeing you again, and with the thought that I want to see you, and breathe you, and _touch you_ comes the burning, gnawing guilt that Moony tries to eat from my chest every time there's a full moon without the protection of a Wolf's Bane potion.

I think back to you crawling into my bed, apologizing, pleading, and now the _why, why, why_ is no longer _why have you done this, Sirius Black?_, but _why didn't you stop him, Remus Lupin? _Andit's such a dangerous question, because then the guilt of James and Lily's, of Peter's and twelve innocent muggle's deaths shifts from your shoulders onto mine.

Harry's an orphan because of me; parents lost their children; husbands lost their wives; wives lost their husbands; children lost their parents, and all because I couldn't say _Damn it, Sirius Black, James Potter is your _brother_, and we are your _family_, and we will make it out okay, but you _must stay here _and trust us. We love you, _I_ love you. StayStayStayStay._

Instead I had clung to you with as much desperate need as you'd clung to me, and in our young, inexperienced, wasted youth, we'd allowed each other to become murderers together, and we'd betrayed James and Lily Potter together, and committed genocide in the middle of a crowded muggle street where we'd always gone to get ice cream when we were not-yet-men _together_.

And now I was going to let you murder me. Maybe I was even going to let you murder baby Harry, and all because I could not look Dumbledore in the eye and say _he's an animagus, Dumbledore. He's an animagus and he wants to watch the whole world burn._

But I couldn't, because I always clung to the hope that James Potter had given me when he'd said those words.

"_I know, Remus, I know, I know. Dumbledore's already told me. Dumbledore told me it's Sirius. But you're wrong."_

_In these days of no regrets,_

_I keep mine to myself._

_And all the things we never said,_

_I can say for someone else._

_And nothing lasts forever, but we always try._

_And I just can't help but wonder why_

_We let it pass us by._

Now I know the truth, and there's no abolition of guilt like I feel there should be-not for me, not for you.

Peter Pettigrew had betrayed us all, and now the guilt comes in waves that I _couldn't trust you_, and that I _didn't trust you_ and that I _hadn't listened to James _when he said_, "I know, Remus, I know, I know. Dumbledore's already told me. Dumbledore told me it's Sirius. But you're wrong."_

I feel like werewolves suffer enough and that we should be granted at least the power, the _ability_ to smell the difference between truth and lies. But we can't, it doesn't work that way; we're just as subject to our useless human minds as the rest of the world, except that once a month we turn into bloodthirsty beasts with a need to howl our anguish to the moon.

But you are so forgiving, Sirius, despite the years and so much damage, that you _smile_, and you _embrace_ _me_, and I never thought I'd again get to say the words, "Together?"

But I did, and just when I was brimming with hope that your name would be cleared, that we could salvage some of the broken bits that losing two Marauders and each other left behind to raise Harry and tell him the truth _together_, the full moon peeked from behind the edges of the clouds.

I was again guilty that you_ could not be free_.

I'd tried to make up for this guilt by giving you the shattered pieces of my heart, and you were _so forgiving_ that you smiled at me, and you _embraced me_, and there in the hallway of 12 Grimmauld Place, with both of us clutching at each other's sweaty palms and staring at the doorway of a room that used to belong to a young Sirius Black, I again got to ask, "Together?"

"Together."

Our lovemaking was clumsy, and desperate, and rushed. It was everything it shouldn't have been when it should have been _perfect_, but it was more than enough. We had time for perfection, even if we had to hide away for the rest of our lives like men condemned. For now we needed comfort, and reassurance, and the realization that _you are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone._

_When I see you now,_

_I wonder how I could have watched you walk away._

_If I let you down, please forgive me now..._

_For that beautiful goodbye._

But I should have known better than to think you could be caged.

I don't remember when you'd started to prowl the bedroom floor at night as if wearing a path into the dusty floors of your own bedroom would somehow absolve you of the guilt the rest of the wizarding world still thought clung like a second cloak to your slowly broadening shoulders. I don't remember when our whispered words of frenzied love began to turn into arguments and harsh accusations that hurt, and stung, but were okay because _you are not alone, you are not alone, you are not alone, I'mSorryI'mSorryI'mSorry_.

What I do remember is the look on your face when Snape told us where Harry had gone, and how, despite your fear, you'd looked so _alive_. The boy I'd remembered falling in love with was at the surface, just as eager to protect and prove himself as he was terrified for his godson, and you'd looked at me and I knew I should have begged you to stay, to trust us, to let us save him and bring him back to you.

Instead, I smiled, and I embraced you, and this time it was your turn to ask, "Together?"

Together.

_Baby, what can I do..._

_To get through to you?_

_And sometimes I cry;_

_It's a fool's lullaby._

_Sometimes I cry;_

_It's just a fool's lullaby._

I'm reminded harshly of the fact that this is the second time that I have lost the man that I love at the small funeral that we hold for you.

Holding onto Harry was the only thing that stopped me from shoving him out of the way and following you through the veil like Harry was trying to do; perhaps the only thing, even, that stopped me from taking him with me so that he could meet James, and Lily, and I could have you, and we could have_ each other_ for a space of time so enormously infinite that our feeble human minds cannot even begin to grasp the concept of _eternity_.

If I were to be honest, I still don't understand why I stopped myself from going. Sometimes I tell myself it's because I heard a break through the fervent whispers in the veil, that I heard your voice saying, _Not Harry, Remus. Not Harry, _but I am aware that this is impossible.

I am aware I couldn't hear the whispers at all.

Mostly I attribute it to my ghastly reserve of cowardice, which Tonks and Harry have both taken to telling me is ludicrous. It doesn't feel ludicrous, Padfoot, when I am curled up in a bed that smells of forest, and smoke, and musky dog; in a bed that screams _SiriusSiriusSirius_ like a mantra-like a _benediction_-to my broken mind.

It doesn't feel ludicrous when the tears come unwarranted at the most inconvenient of times, but always _here_, and always when I'm _alone_ as if they have every intention of washing the smell of you away from the sheets themselves.

But even though I'm alone, and you are not here, and there's _nobody, nothing, anything_ except for _Harry_ that keeps me going, _I am alive._

Still, in my most treasure fantasies, just before you fall through the veil, your eyes find mine with a smile, arms thrown wide as if you mean to embrace me, and I reach for you as you whisper, "Together?"

Together.

_I'm dying inside._

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**If you got here, hopefully that means you finished it all without keeling over! HURRAH! Reviews are very much and highly appreciated. Thankyousomuch!**


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